


Darkness Silence Solitude

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Dumps Fic on You and Runs Away, F/M, Flynn and Wyatt are Allergic to Feelings, God They're Messy, Happy Halloween '18, Hopefully Not Too Bad, I Don't Think This Turned Out as Scary as I Wanted, M/M, Messy Messy Boys, Space Horror AU, Space zombies, The Lack of Communication in this Fic is Astounding, The OT3 Are Okay, They are Especially Allergic to Talking about Feelings, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis, alas, mentions of gore, no promises about anyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan and Inspector Garcia Flynn wake up on The Mothership with no memories and no clue what’s happened to the crew. As they navigate the ship and their memories start to resurface, they begin to realize they’re not alone… and that the crew is indeed still present, but horrifyingly changed… Can they trust Lucy, the ship’s navigational expert trapped in the command center? Or does she know more about the two of them than she’s letting on?





	Darkness Silence Solitude

_“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. _”__

_“It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.”_

_~ H.P. Lovecraft_

* * *

_Screams._

_Someone is screaming._

_Lorena—Lorena no—Iris, Iris!_

_No!_

His eyes flew open.

He sat up, his chest heaving. He’d been—upset, dreaming, dreaming about…

He couldn’t remember.

He turned, swinging his legs over the side of the… the cryo tube, that’s what this was. It was a cryo tube.

Monitors beeped quietly, registering that he was awake. The room was dark. Silent. Rows of other tubes stretched down, down, down, but they were empty.

He was alone.

That wasn’t right. He didn’t know how he knew it wasn’t right, he just… knew. Somehow.

He stood up. Well, he was wearing a uniform, so that was a start. A bloody, torn uniform. The blood was brown, long dried. Not fresh.

He had pockets. He dug around in them and pulled out an ID card.

 _Garcia Flynn_ , the card read.

There was another card as well. This one wasn’t a general ID/pass card, but a badge.

_Inspector Flynn._

Inspector? For what? This wasn’t a police badge.

And where was he, anyway? This didn’t look like any spaceship he remembered. Not that he could remember much of anything, exactly. It was more like he just instinctively knew things. He knew that Venus and Mars were now independent governments from Earth. He knew, somehow, that he’d fought in the wars, on the side of Venus and on Mars, fighting for independence. He knew that Europa was still a colony. He knew that he was from Croatia but that his mother was American. He knew how to speak German, Spanish, Italian, English, Croatian, Russian, and a bit of French.

But when he actually tried to remember days, remember specific events, they slipped away from him. Childhood, that was easy. Adolescence, sure. Bits and pieces of the war. But the closer he got to the present the more it all slid through his mental grasp like water. He couldn’t hold onto it.

He walked around, getting his bearings. No injuries. Okay.

Garcia Flynn. The name sounded right. It sounded like it fit.

Flynn looked out one of the windows, at the infinite blackness dotted with stars. Space. He was, somehow, used to the view. He had a feeling he’d seen a lot of space.

He turned away from the view, back towards the cryo tubes.

Why were they empty? If he was in stasis then everyone else should be in stasis too. And why were all the lights off? They should’ve come on automatically when he started moving around, activated by his movement.

He turned back towards the window, peering around, trying to see if he could glimpse other parts of the ship. Was there an electrical failure?

The muzzle of a gun was pressed to the back of his head.

“Who the hell are you,” someone growled, a man.

Flynn reacted with instincts he hadn’t even realized he had.

He spun around, ducking, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting it until the gun was dropped, the man’s arm pinned behind his back as he slammed the man face-first into the glass of an empty cryo tube. The man grunted, struggling.

_“You were with Delta. Intergalactic.”_

_“And you were a terrorist. Or so your file says.”_

_“Rebel. But your country does have a habit of rewriting the history books to make yourselves look better.”_

The flash of memory hit him like a punch in the gut and he staggered back, panting, as the man spun around. He had bright blue eyes, eyes that looked as unsure and flustered as Flynn felt, with a five o’clock shadow and soft, floppy dark blond hair. Something in Flynn’s chest tugged painfully, like a yanked string. He had the strangest urge to reach out, to pull the man in, hold him.

“I know you,” Flynn blurted out.

The man stared right back. “I—I know you. I think. I…” The man shook his head, scrubbing at his face. “It’s all gone, I can’t remember—but I know you.”

“Wyatt.” The name floated to the forefront of his mind. “Wyatt Logan.”

“Flynn.” Wyatt nodded. “You’re Flynn.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, breathing hard. “Do you—do you remember anything?” Wyatt asked.

“Childhood, up through… right around the time of the war it gets fuzzy.”

“Same here. Fucked up, right, I remember every time my dad hit me but…” He waved his hand, showing his wedding ring. “I can’t remember my wife, whoever she is.”

Flynn looked down and saw his own ring. Looking at it made him want to scream, for some reason, to rage. “Me neither.” Who was he married to? A woman? A man? Somehow he knew that it could be either.

 _Or both,_ his mind added.

He looked up at Wyatt and something tugged inside him again. How did he know this man?

“What do you remember, the most recent thing?” Flynn asked.

“I was with Delta Force, part of the Intergalactic Earth Military, United States faction,” Wyatt replied. “Master Sergeant. I know I’m part of security here on this ship but I only know that because…” He gestured at his uniform. “Says it here.”

It did, in fact, state _Logan, Security_ on a badge sewn onto the front of his jacket. His jacket which was also torn and bloody.

“Something happened here,” Flynn said. “Why are we the only two?”

“And electricity’s out,” Wyatt noted. “And… you’re covered in blood.”

“Same with you,” Flynn pointed out.

Wyatt shrugged as if to say ‘fair enough’. He picked up the gun, holstering it. “This is the only cryo bay, right? We can’t be the only two left on this ship though. There must be others.”

“Maybe we were criminals they had to put in cryo until they could reach civilization and put us in a proper jail,” Flynn suggested sarcastically, folding his arms.

Wyatt gave him a deadpan stare. “Real helpful, Flynn.”

That felt familiar, comfortable. Like this kind of exchange had happened to them, between them, many times before.

“Well.” He shrugged. “If there’s nobody stopping us. Might as well explore the ship.”

Wyatt looked a little nervous, but he followed Flynn as he turned and headed down the hall of tubes towards the door.

And almost immediately stepped on something. Something that wasn’t—it wasn’t goop, but it looked like it had once been goop, or some kind of liquid. It was brown, dark brown, and spread all over the floor.

Flynn paused. “Wyatt.”

Wyatt looked down. “That’s—nobody could survive losing that much blood.”

Something was definitely wrong. Flynn automatically reached into his jacket and pulled out—

“You have a gun!?” Wyatt yelped.

“Apparently,” Flynn snapped. Why did he have a gun? Firearms were strictly regulated. It would be nearly impossible for him to get a firearm onto a spaceship unless he wanted to risk trying to steal one from the security armory, or unless…

Flynn pulled out the other I.D. card, the one that looked like a kind of badge. “It says Inspector,” he said, holding it out to Wyatt. “Could I be…”

“A government inspector?” Wyatt finished.

There were still marshals on flights, but an inspector was sent in if a government suspected one of the privately-owned space stations of wrongdoing.

“Any idea what you were investigating?” Wyatt asked.

Flynn shook his head. “No idea.”

_Rittenhouse._

Flynn started. The name came to him as if someone had spoken it. “Rittenhouse.”

“What?”

“That’s what I remembered. Rittenhouse.”

“What is that? I feel like I should know that name. It’s an important name.” Wyatt looked upset that he couldn’t remember.

Flynn was feeling pretty sick himself. There was dried blood on the floor, he and Wyatt looked like they’d been through battle, and yet he couldn’t remember any of it.

Although he was also hungry, so that wasn’t helping either.

The question was, why would he be an inspector? They lived lonely lives, and he’d heard horror stories about inspectors who’d crossed powerful companies and disappeared. It was the kind of job you took when you didn’t care if you lived or died, which didn’t make sense—especially since it was a government job, and he’d never work for a government, he’d spent his life fighting governments—

_Papa!_

The memory was like getting stabbed, horror and pain washing over him.

_His hands are stained with blood, his wife—Lorena, she, she’s on top of Iris, she died protecting Iris, God, his family, his beautiful girls his wife his daughter his girls his family—_

The room spun and went black.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt just barely caught Flynn as he fell. “Whoa! Shit! Flynn!”

He didn’t know who Flynn was, but he knew that he trusted the guy, for some reason. Around Flynn he felt… safe.

He couldn’t help but notice the wedding ring on Flynn’s finger, and the one on his own. And when he looked at Flynn there was a… a hot curl in his gut, the kind he’d always tried to ignore when it came to men.

The last thing he could definitively remember was boarding the space shuttle to get home to see Jess. He’d been planning to propose, to tell her he wasn’t doing tours anymore. But had she said no? That had been—fuck, that had been seven, no, eight goddamn years ago. What had happened in those eight years? Had he—were he and Flynn—

Flynn’s eyes opened and he dry heaved, gasping. “Whoa there,” Wyatt muttered, helping him to sit up. “You okay?”

“Lorena,” Flynn gasped. “Iris.”

Those names—Wyatt felt like he should know them. “Family?”

“My wife,” Flynn rasped. “My daughter.”

Wyatt wasn’t sure why his stomach twisted in disappointment. He’d known the guy literally for five minutes. Jesus, Logan, pull yourself together. He wasn’t even out, last he recalled. In fact he pretty strongly remembered not wanting to be out, ever.

“What happened?” he asked, shoving his feelings very firmly in a box and labeling them Do Not Open.

“They died,” Flynn said. He sounded fucking wrecked, his eyes wild. “I remember—I couldn’t save them, they died together, so much—blood, fuck…”

“Just breathe,” Wyatt advised. His instinct in situations like this was to hug, and he wasn’t sure if Flynn would welcome that. “In and out.”

Flynn slowly seemed to come back to himself, his hand digging into Wyatt’s shoulder as he held on. “My family. My girls.”

“I’m sorry.” Wyatt knew it sounded fucking useless but it was all he knew to say.

“That’s why I’m an inspector.” Flynn sounded like he was talking to himself more than Wyatt. “I didn’t care if I died…”

Shit. That didn’t sound pleasant. “What happened to them? If—if it’s okay to ask.”

“War,” Flynn said bluntly. “I had a bit of a price on my head after I aided in the Mars Liberation Front, so I relocated them to Venus. Some old friends found us anyway. I barely escaped with my life.”

Fuck. “I’m…” Wyatt literally didn’t have the words. “Garcia, I’m…”

“Wyatt?” A voice echoed through the room and both men jumped to their feet, grabbing their weapons. “Flynn?”

Wyatt knew that voice. It tugged at him, the way Flynn’s face had tugged at him. Something inside of him said that he trusted this person.

“Who is it?” Flynn responded.

“I can see you on the screens,” the voice replied. It was a woman. “I’m using the AI program that helped run the ship. Is it working? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, we can hear you, who are you?” Wyatt asked.

There was a sigh of relief. “I’m… you don’t remember?”

“No.” Flynn shook his head.

“Rushed cryostasis procedures can result in temporary memory loss,” the woman said. She sounded upset. “I’m so sorry. When you went under—we thought it was the only option.”

“Why? Why would it be the only option? “What happened here?”

“I’m Lucy,” the woman said, choosing to answer the earlier question instead.

_Lucy._

Wyatt inhaled sharply as an image came into his mind—a beautiful brunette, sharp, angled features, laughing dark eyes, a wide smile. His heart ached and he knew, he just _knew_ , that he was in love with her.

_“Lucy Preston. Navigational expert for the ship.” She shakes his hand._

_“Pleasure to meet you ma’am.”_

_“I’m pretty sure we’re the same age so there’s really no need to call me ma’am.”_

_His stomach does a telltale flip that he tries to cover up with a little smirk. He and Jess took this job to save their marriage, not for him to chase after someone else and add ‘cheater’ to the long list of failures on his marital record. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”_

Wyatt shook himself out of the memory and looked over at Flynn. Flynn looked the way Wyatt felt—like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his head and knocked all the emotion back into it. The ache in Flynn’s eyes told Wyatt everything he needed to know.

Looked like both of them were in love with Lucy.

“How long have we been in cryo?” Flynn asked, clearing his throat and altogether looking like the guy who’d been caught staring at a pretty girl in math class. “Lucy?”

“Three weeks,” Lucy replied. “I’ve been in the control center trying to get systems back online. I’ve managed some of them, finally. We decided you two would go into cryo to stay safe and so you wouldn’t have to scrounge for supplies while I repaired things. Now we should be good enough for me to operate the doors to get you here, so I woke you up.”

“Why can’t you just come to us?” Wyatt asked.

There was a long pause. When Lucy spoke again, her words were careful. Weighted.

“Because I’m safe in here, and I wouldn’t survive getting to you,” she said. “I don’t have your training.”

“What does that mean?” Flynn demanded. “Lucy, what happened?”

“Something went wrong,” Lucy replied. “Some kind of pathogen or something. We don’t know. It took over the ship, over the people. Spreading like wildfire. It… it changed people.”

“What do you mean, how did it change them?”

“It turned them into—into things.” Lucy sounded like she was horrified but trying not to show it. “Monsters. They killed everyone. I locked myself in here for safety but then when the systems went down, I couldn’t open the doors for you. So we had you go into cryo until I could fix things. And now I need you to get to the control room so we can get out of here. We have to start the self-destruct mechanism. The AI can’t do it itself, it’s not allowed to commit… suicide, for lack of a better term.”

“Care to explain a little more?” Wyatt asked in frustration.

“I can’t. Every time I use the intercom they can hear it. It’s so loud—they’ll follow the sound and find you. I have to limit contact. But I can try and direct you through the least infected parts of the ship.”

“Sounds good,” Flynn said.

“I need you to get here safely,” Lucy added. “So—so just come straight to me, okay? No crazy antics.”

Apparently, he and Flynn were known for ‘crazy antics.’ Somehow, that didn’t surprise him. “Okay.”

“We’ll do our best,” Flynn promised.

“When you exit, take your first left, then head straight down the hallway. Take the elevator down three floors. I’ll give you further instructions then. The creatures move around.”

“Understood.”

Lucy went silent.

Wyatt glanced over at Flynn. He might not remember everything about what had happened the last few years, but he knew that he had to get to Lucy. It was like there was a homing beacon inside of him, calling out to her.

Whatever it took to get him to her, he’d do it. But he also wanted to know… what had happened? How did he know her? How did he know Flynn—and why was he so drawn to Flynn as well?

He’d already had a couple flashes of memory. He supposed he had to hope that he’d recover the rest.

 

* * *

 

Flynn unlocked the door to the cryo bay with his I.D. card, peering out. “Clear,” he whispered.

Wyatt followed, covering his six. “How do you just lose years of memories?” he whispered.

“I’ve heard stories,” Flynn replied. “Getting into cryo was rushed, they didn’t halt brain activity properly, it damaged parts of the mind. Whatever reason we went in, we clearly felt it was… worth the risks of rushing it.”

Like monsters beating at the door.

“Or the lack of systems did it,” Wyatt pointed out. The hallway they were in was completely dark. He found a flashlight in his pocket and pulled it out, saw Wyatt had done the same. He could only assume they’d needed those flashlights before they’d gone into cryo as well. Power must have been already out then.

Flynn moved forward cautiously, trying not to make too much sound. Sometimes he thought he could hear something in the distance, echoing through the walls. Almost but not quite moans and roars.

It made a shiver crawl up his spine, like a spider of ice. He wasn’t new to combat situations, or life and death ones. But the darkness felt like it was actively crawling out towards him, reaching for him, wrapping around him with suffocating limbs.

_“This is an intense assignment. You know you can’t trust anyone.”_

_“With all due respect, Captain Christopher, I don’t need you to patronize me. I’m well aware of the dangers of this job.”_

_“Then kindly be aware that I don’t want you to be a loose cannon. You’re outside my system, Inspector, and that means if you go poking around recklessly it’s not just your life you’re putting at stake, it’s the lives of my crew. Now, this is Rufus, he’s our chief of engineering.”_

Flynn paused. Yes. They were in engineering, that was where cryo bay was held. Captain Christopher… he could remember her voice, but not her face.

“You remember something?” Wyatt whispered.

“How could you tell?”

“You looked like how I felt.”

Flynn had to bite back a chuckle at the rueful tone in Wyatt’s voice. Wyatt looked like the kind of guy that Flynn would’ve picked up in a bar back in his youth. Hell, Flynn would’ve taken the chance on trying to pick him up now if circumstances were different.

But there was also Lucy.

He remembered her the second she said her name. Lucy Preston. Beautiful, genius, talented, hardworking, far too hard on herself, a perfectionist, afraid to fail, compassionate to a fault.

He hated that he could remember he loved her, but not why. He remembered who she was and what sort of person she was but couldn’t yet recall specific events. It was maddening.

There was a sound at the end of the hallway.

Flynn froze. “You hear that?”

“Yeah. That was… something.”

Flynn carefully swept his flashlight beam up, pointing it towards the end of the hallway.

Oh holy fuck.

“What _is_ that thing?” Wyatt hissed, sounding like he was actively swallowing down his fear.

It was—it was a deformed monstrosity, a gross, melting-clay parody of the human body. It was like several tumors had grown underneath the skin, making it bulge all over, making the creature limp. The skin was mottled, veins black and bulging, and its face was… Flynn felt bile rising in his throat. Its eyes were stark white, like they’d rolled back into the creature’s head, and its lips were black. The skin was sagging, like it was about to fall off the face, and its teeth were elongated. Sharp.

Flynn stared at the creature, almost unable to process what he was seeing. The creature stared back at them. It was growling soft and low, drool sliding out from those cracked horrible lips.

And then something streaked at them from the side, flying into a leap, and Wyatt yelled as Flynn got hit in the side.

He went down, swinging, kicking out, as something clawed at him. “ _Fuck!_ ” he yelled, swinging, hitting the thing in the side of the head.

“Flynn look out!” Wyatt yelled, and then there was a flash of fire and Flynn flinched in surprise as Wyatt fired at the creature’s head.

Pus exploded and Flynn covered his face, fighting the urge to retch. Fuck, that smelled awful. Wyatt was firing down the hallway, at the first creature, Flynn was guessing. He hauled the dead creature off of him and scrambled to his feet. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Wyatt gasped. His face was the color of curdled milk. “What the fucking hell—”

“The—the pathogen or whatever, Lucy mentioned, those must be it.” Already he could hear growling and shrieking getting louder. The time for being quiet was over. “Run for the elevator, run, run!”

Wyatt booked it but didn’t stop watching Flynn’s six, keeping Flynn’s back covered instinctively. Flynn did the same, turning and bringing his weapon up, making sure nothing was going to come at them like that again. He couldn’t help but think—was that planned? One creature to distract while another creature attacked from the side?

More creatures could be heard now, coming for them. “Lucy!” Flynn yelled.

“I’m starting up the elevator!” Lucy replied over the intercom.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Wyatt muttered. Another creature was heading for them. They ran on all fours like dogs, Flynn noticed—and then the creature took a flying leap at them.

Flynn fired several times into its chest but the creature kept coming. He aimed higher, hitting the head… and the creature went down.

“Headshots only,” he snapped.

“Got it!” Wyatt replied, firing.

The elevator ahead of them opened and they rushed in, the doors sliding shut just as something slammed against them.

Wyatt sagged against the wall. Flynn’s knees felt pretty weak, too.

_“What’s going on?”_

_“Rumors—some sort of problem over in medical. The science team are all in quarantine.”_

_“Quarantine? Flynn—”_

_“It’s okay.” He starts to reach for her hand then pulls back, unsure how welcome he’d be. “Lucy… I’ll look into it, all right? It’s probably—you know how gossip is.”_

_“I also know we’re a microcosm on this station. We’re separated from the rest of the universe, if something goes wrong…”_

_“You’ll be the first person I tell, okay? And you can get yourself and Amy and Wyatt out.”_

_She looks at him with an odd expression. “Wyatt?”_

_“Oh c’mon, Lucy, don’t think I don’t know.”_

_She gives a rueful, frustrated laugh. “No, Flynn, I don’t think you know at all.”_

“Flynn?”

He looked over at Wyatt, who was watching him like he thought maybe Flynn was going to fall to the floor again. Flynn waved him off. “I’m good.”

So, Lucy and Wyatt. He couldn’t say he was surprised. Wyatt’s face when he’d heard Lucy’s name was… it was… yeah.

Flynn swallowed down the bitter taste in his mouth. It felt like of course this would happen, of course he’d be in love with a woman who was in love with someone else.

He glanced over at Wyatt. He couldn’t be sure, but the telltale tug in his gut when he looked at Wyatt, the way he wanted to reach over and reassure him things were okay… he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been slammed with not just one unrequited batch of feelings, but two.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt scrubbed at his face. His hands were shaking. Fuck, those things were—Jesus fuck.

He glanced over at Flynn. The handsome bastard looked stoic, like this was just another day at the office. How the hell was that fair.

Now he could guess how everyone had died on this ship, why systems were down, why he and Flynn had rushed into cryo. Lucy was safe, but how many others had died? Were they the only three left on the ship? What about—Rufus and Jiya, those two names came to mind. Jiya was in IT, Rufus was chief of engineering.

_“You’re my best friend, buddy.”_

_“Y’know sometimes I think you’re my best friend, sometimes I think Flynn is my best friend, then I remember you’re both idiots who are lucky to have me.”_

_“Thanks, Rufus, I think it’s your faith in us that we value so much.”_

What about Jess?

Jess… had he never married her? Was she still on Earth? Was she—

It was like being sucked in by the ocean.

_They’re at the tree, the one on top of the hill, the one they’d stargaze under as kids._

_“Wyatt?” God, Jess looks beautiful. She always looks beautiful. Like she’s the only real thing in the world, the only thing anchoring him when he’s floating and can figure out which end is up. “You okay?”_

_“Yeah.” Fuck, where is that ring box. “Yeah, I—”_

_He gets the box, pulls out the ring, Jess gasps, he fumbles—_

_Drops it._

_“Ah, shit.”_

_Jess laughs._

_“I’m so sorry, I wanted—this was supposed to be—” Romantic. Perfect._

_Jess gets down on her knees next to him, takes his face in her hands. “C’mere you.” She kisses him. “The answer’s yes, by the way.”_

_Then she helps him find the damn ring._

“Whoa, whoa—”

Wyatt realized he was a) not in an elevator not on Earth, b) Jess was nowhere to be seen and c) he was currently being propped up by Flynn.

He kind of hated himself for thinking _wow the guy’s all muscle_.

“Looks like we’re both prone to fainting fits,” Flynn joked, helping him to stand. Wyatt leaned against him, which for some reason felt natural, instinctive. “You’re good,” Flynn told him, getting an arm around his waist to hold him up better. “Hey, just breathe.”

Wyatt had the urge to turn into him, to breathe Flynn in, to just stay like this as long as he could. Flynn kept holding him up, quietly talking to him, reminding him to breathe. The elevator had stopped but the doors were still closed. Wyatt suspected Lucy was letting them have a moment. If she was in the command center then she had access to the AI and the security systems the AI ran, which meant there were cameras pretty much everywhere in the public spaces, including elevators.

He felt a surge of gratefulness to her, and to Flynn. He let himself sag against Flynn for another moment, then forced himself upright.

“Jess,” he croaked out. “Jess, she was on the ship. I proposed—I dropped the ring—she was here wasn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” Flynn admitted. “I don’t remember. That sounds right, what you’re saying, it sounds… right, in my chest.”

Wyatt nodded. Yeah, that was the best way of describing it.

“You okay?” Flynn searched Wyatt’s face, his hands at Wyatt’s shoulders, grounding him.

“Yeah.” Wyatt nodded. “I’m okay.”

“I hate to rush you,” Lucy said over the intercom. “But I’m about to open the doors. You need to go and take the second to last door on the right. It’s the most direct route but it’ll take you close to the science labs where the outbreak started so be careful.”

“We’re ready,” Flynn replied.

The doors slid open.

This corridor was dark as well, nothing but their flashlights to light it up. Wyatt could hear his heartbeat spiking. All around them in the distance were growling and moaning noises, nothing too close but that could change in an instant.

It was like being on the strike team all over again, except worse. He had one gun, a few extra clips, and no armor. No other weapons. Only one man to cover his six.

They were riding blind.

Flynn seemed a little more in his element. _Rebel._ The word flashed through Wyatt’s mind. Flynn hadn’t been with the army, he’d been guerilla. He had to be used to being overwhelmed, to having scarce resources.

Up ahead of them came a moan that turned into a shriek. Flynn paused. “You hear that?”

“Yeah I hear it, do I look deaf to you?”

“No, listen.”

Wyatt paused. He could hear those creepy as fuck sounds all right but he didn’t know what Flynn was getting at. “What is it?”

“The way it gets louder. Then fades. They’re moving…” Flynn’s tongue flicked out across his lip— _nervous habit, means he’s emotional or concentrating_ , Wyatt’s memory suddenly surfaced. “They’re patrolling,” he whispered.

“Patrolling?”

“Yes. So that means…”

Flynn grabbed him, opened the nearest door, and shoved them both into it, closing the door behind them.

“If they were patrolling—”

“Lucy could see it. Yes. That’s why she said we had to get out of the elevator then. But I think we still missed the window.”

Sure enough, Wyatt could hear the moaning getting louder. He couldn’t stop shaking. Fuck, he was better than this, he was a trained soldier, but nothing could possibly train anyone for seeing something like this…

Flynn’s hand wrapped around his in the dark. This was some kind of supply closet, not a lot of room, and pressed against Flynn’s chest he could feel Flynn’s heart beating as rapidly as Wyatt’s was. But that was the only sign Flynn was nervous. The hand squeezing his reassuringly was steady, not shaking.

Flynn reached his arm up, bracing his hand on the wall behind Wyatt’s head, leaning in so that his mouth was right at Wyatt’s ear. It was so that they could talk without being overheard, Wyatt knew that, but it still send a thrill down his spine—one he tried to ignore.

“Just squeeze my hand,” Flynn whispered. “And focus on breathing.”

“You say this like it’s just another mission.”

“It is. That’s how you have to think about it. You can’t let it get to you or it’ll fuck you all up in the head, you have to treat it like it’s just your everyday, at least until we can get out and we can process it properly, all right?”

Wyatt’s squeezed Flynn’s hand as tightly as he could, focusing just on Flynn’s voice. “All right.”

“That’s good,” Flynn whispered. Wyatt tried to hold in his shiver. God, it was so easy to think of Flynn telling him _that’s good_ for entirely different reasons.

Flynn pressed closer, shifting, his arm dropping down to grab his gun, and Wyatt had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek. Shit, shit, were he and Flynn—had they been—because he really wanted to just turn his head, all he had to do would turn his face just a little and he could catch Flynn’s mouth with his—

He could be imagining it, but he thought he felt Flynn shudder. He was almost but not quite straddling Flynn’s thigh, and all it would take was a little shifting…

“Flynn?”

Flynn grunted quietly in response.

“Were we… um… do you remember us ever…” He trailed off.

“Ever what?” Flynn whispered. His lips caught the shell of Wyatt’s ear and Wyatt felt a rush of heat. Dammit he was about to make an idiot of himself with unholy zombie creatures just outside the door. This was not how he’d wanted to die.

He squeezed Flynn’s hand again, and he definitely wasn’t imagining the way Flynn’s breath caught. Oh, God, this was so stupid, what with Lucy and Jess—he still had to find out what happened to Jess, if she was okay—but he also God help him really, really wanted…

Flynn abruptly pulled back, cracking open the door. “I think we’re good.”

Wyatt swayed on the spot. He hadn’t realized he’d been leaning on Flynn so heavily. “They’re gone?” His voice was raspy and he had to swallow a few times.

Fuck. He had to have done something with Flynn, they had to be something to each other, why else would all the carefully crafted defenses he’d thrown up over the years when it came to men come crashing down? And in so short a time?

“We’re clear,” Flynn whispered, stepping out into the hallway. “Let’s go.”

They moved as quickly and as quietly as they could until they got to the second door from the last on the right. Flynn pressed himself to one side and nodded at Wyatt, who slid his I.D. card and opened the door.

It was just as dark in here as it was in the previous hallway. All of this darkness, this inability to see, and the distant noises… it was like some twisted nightmare, like the corn maze his town would put up every Halloween. It always scared the shit out of him. Jess would let him hold her hand and lead him through, because he knew he had to go through or the other boys would call him a pussy and he couldn’t have that. Jess would squeeze his hand and whisper in his ear, remind him that it was okay, and she’d keep him safe. Then when they got out of the maze she’d scream and jump around like she’d been scared and kiss Wyatt on the cheek and say he’d been ‘so brave’ and kept her ‘feeling safe.’

She’d always taken care of him.

He had to find her. If she was on this ship—it had only been a few weeks, right? Jess was damn smart, she could survive for a few weeks. He’d have to ask Lucy about it.

But—he was in love with Lucy.

Fuck, it was all so messed up in his head.

Just act like it’s a mission, Logan, he told himself. Act like it’s a mission and focus on your task.

He could deal with this internal romantic crisis later.

 

* * *

 

Lucy came over the intercom again, giving them instructions on where to go. “There’s a lot of them,” she warned. “I can’t talk to you for a while. But hopefully… your memories are coming back, right?”

“Somewhat,” Flynn replied. The memory of Wyatt pressed against him in the closet still burned, like an imprint of heat on his skin. Dammit. He had enough to worry about, getting attracted to the man he could barely remember wasn’t something he needed on top of it all.

“Lucy?” he whispered. If this was the last time he talked to her…

_“Lucy.”_

_She’s been crying all night. Something about Wyatt and Jess—when is it not about Wyatt and Jess. Flynn wants to strangle the guy half the time. The other half he wants to fuck the stupid out of him, nice and slow until Wyatt’s forgotten everything except how to kiss Flynn back._

_But now Wyatt’s being stupid again and Lucy’s paying for it, Lucy with her sweet pure heart and her endless compassion and her ridiculous habit of letting people walk all over her._

_She curls into him, letting him hold her, rock her gently. “It’s all such a mess,” she sobs. “I don’t know what to do and it’s all such a mess. And everyone’s all upset about the rumors, and I know Denise knows something but she won’t talk to me about it, and science sector is all shut down and Amy’s having nightmares and Wyatt’s—”_

_“I don’t give a damn about Wyatt right now.” And that’s not exactly true, but he can deal with the complicated mess of his feelings for Wyatt another time. Right now, all that matters is Lucy. His darling, darling Lucy. Not that he’ll ever say that out loud._

_Lucy wipes at her eyes. “I thought… you two were arguing earlier.”_

_“When are we not arguing.”_

_“I thought you came here about that.”_

_“That’s not why I’m here.”_

_She looks up at him, and something terrifying and knowing slides into her eyes. “Then why are you here?”_

_He forgets how to breathe for a moment. He’s here because. Because he loves her, more than the air he breathes, more than life, certainly more than himself. Because he’d do whatever it took to bring the light back into her eyes again._

_But how can he tell her that? How can he when he knows—he knows she—_

_Someone bangs on the door. “Lucy!” It’s Jiya. “Captain says to come to the command center, something about an attack in medical? She needs you to put parts of the ship on lockdown and the AI’s being tricky.”_

_Lucy blinks, like she’s been brought back to reality. “Ah, yeah, okay, I’ll be there in a sec.”_

_She stands up, starts to reach for him, then pauses. “I’ll—we’ll talk more about this later.”_

_He has no intention of continuing this conversation. He’s not about to see the pity come into Lucy’s eyes or hear her soft but definite rejection. But he’s not going to tell her that right now—right now he just lets her go to deal with the ever-growing crisis that nobody seems willing to talk about._

“Flynn?” Lucy repeated.

“The crisis,” Flynn said. He ignored the rest of the memory, although he could feel a telltale heat in his eyes and saw Wyatt was looking at him strangely. God knew what expression was on his face right now. “I was called to inspect because of what happened in the science department, the quarantined scientists brought to medical. Only Denise and I knew at first.”

“What? Knew what?” Wyatt asked.

“I don’t remember, just that it was the reason I came here. Something wasn’t right. Something…” His head ached as he tried to remember and he pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. “Fuck, something about unethical—business practices.”

“We can talk about this when you’re safe,” Lucy said. “Just follow my instructions and get to the command center, please. I need you two to be safe.”

“We’ll get there Luce,” Wyatt said.

“I promise,” Flynn added. He would get to Lucy, no matter what, because she needed him and he would never be able to say no to her. He knew that in his bones.

“Okay. Be careful, please. I can’t lose you.” Then there was silence.

Flynn knew, without Wyatt having to say it, that Lucy had cut off communications. It was just the two of them now.

It made sense—the sound of the intercom was loud. It was for the AI or a person in command to make general announcements or to say things like ‘Dr. Carlin you’re wanted in engineering.’ It wasn’t for private conversations. The creatures had to be able to hear Lucy’s loud and echoing voice coming from just one part of the ship.

But he still hated that he couldn’t hear her anymore.

“All right.” They had Lucy’s instructions. “Let’s go.”

He and Wyatt began to move through the darkness.

 

* * *

 

This place was a fucking maze. Wyatt recognized some of it—he had a flash of memory in the mess hall, and he remembered where the gym was—but most of it looked the same as the rest.

One thing he did notice, though: dust.

“Is it something about space?” he asked, creeping down the corridor with Flynn behind him. “Does dust develop quicker?”

There were layers of dust everywhere, and all of the bloodstains on the walls and floors—and there were a lot of them—had long since dried and caked. How did all this happen in just a few weeks?

There was no answer from Flynn.

Wyatt turned around, heart racing, fearing the worst—only to find that Flynn was a bit of a ways back, peering through an open door into a room.

“Flynn!” he hissed, hurrying back to him. “We have to keep moving!” Any second those creatures could find them again.

“I know this room,” Flynn whispered. “This room is important.”

“What’s important is getting safely to Lucy.”

“You think I’d jeopardize that?” Flynn asked, his eyes blazing. “I won’t let her down.”

“I have,” Wyatt whispered, and it wasn’t until he said it that he realized it was true. “I’ve let her down, and I’m not doing it again, so I’m getting you to safety but not if you keep poking around.”

Flynn rolled his eyes at him and stepped into the room.

“Garcia—goddammit.”

Wyatt followed him in.

The room was an office of some kind. Sitting at the desk was…

Wyatt clapped a hand over his mouth to hold in the instinctive yelp. That was a corpse—and a corpse so decayed that it couldn’t have only been there for a few weeks.

“What the hell went on here?” he whispered.

Flynn walked up to the computers, tapping one. “There’s a video on here.”

Wyatt walked over to join him, letting Flynn lean over his shoulder because of Flynn’s height. Flynn’s hand rested on the small of Wyatt’s back and Wyatt had to breathe carefully around the rush of heat that spread through him.

“You okay?” Flynn murmured. “You’re tense.”

“We’re making our way through the pitch black trying to avoid creepy zombie monsters. Why wouldn’t I be tense?”

“Fair point.” Flynn hit play on the video.

It was filmed from the computer, obviously, showing a man sitting at his desk.

“Connor Mason,” Flynn murmured. “I know him.”

“Same here.” _Head of the science team stationed on the ship. Rufus’s mentor._

“Ah, hello.” Connor gave a wane smile. “Guess this is the last anyone will be seeing of me so, goodbye as well. I’m recording this in my office and hoping to send it out but with Rittenhouse trying to suppress this whole thing, who knows.

“At this point I can only hope that—that some have made it out. We’re completely cut off in this section. There’s too many to get through. And I’m not about to turn… that’s the thing, if you’re viewing this and thinking of coming to get us, to launch a rescue mission: don’t. That’s not what this video is for. This video is to tell you to destroy the station.

“Our experiments got out of control. We were told to push further, to abandon safety protocols, and we’re paying the price for it. If one of the infected bite you, you’ll turn. It’s in their saliva. Same if you ingest any of their bodily fluids so try not to get any in your mouth if they attack you. It’s not airborne, thank God. But don’t get any of their fluids in you.

“They’ve overrun the ship. Please don’t try one of your stupid military maneuvers and kidnap one for study. Just blow this place to Hell. And—it’s my fault. I should have stood up and said no. Captain Christopher is not to blame. Chief of Engineering Rufus Carlin is not to blame. Inspector Garcia Flynn is not to blame. All three tried to stop us at one point or another. Flynn most of all, the tenacious bugger. So please don’t… don’t press any criminal charges against them. This is all on me.

“I hope this message gets out. I hope that this place is destroyed. I hope that if there’s another life… I’m given a chance to do better. Connor Mason, signing off.”

Mason moved forward, but then there was the sound of moaning. Wyatt looked up in alarm—and then realized it was in the video. Mason looked in the direction of the door, his eyes going wide, clearly terrified. “No,” he croaked. “No!”

He brought his hand up and Wyatt saw there was a gun, knew what was going to happen—

Mason put the gun into his mouth and fired.

The video froze.

“Single gunshot,” Flynn said grimly.

“This doesn’t sound like a pathogen,” Wyatt said. “This sounds like—like these creatures were _created_.”

“That must have been what I was sent to investigate.”

“But how? How do you even—like what the hell?”

“We’ll find out more as we go,” Flynn said. He stood up and slid his hand down Wyatt’s back, palm trailing down the spine until he got to Wyatt’s lower back and then pulled away.

Wyatt gripped the edges of the table. Oh—okay. So. That was. That brought a rush of images he didn’t need. Images and thoughts like Flynn sliding his hand around to Wyatt’s front, to slotting himself right up against Wyatt from behind, thoughts like Flynn’s mouth at his neck—

_Lucy’s mouth at his neck, her hands in his hair. She’s around him, fucking down onto him, tugging his hair to keep him where she wants him. She’s so clearly in charge and God he loves it, wants it, wants her so bad, wrapping his arms around her like he could crawl inside of her—_

_He isn’t sure, then, why he feels half cold._

_“Th-there,” Lucy orders, breathless. “Right there, yes, Wyatt, right—”_

_He groans as he feels her coming, crying out, and he buries his face into her neck as he loses himself._

_This was stupid. This was so unbelievably stupid. He just finalized the damn divorce and he doesn’t even take a day before he’s fucking another woman. But it’s Lucy, Lucy who is wrapped up all around him and petting his hair and murmuring endearments and makes him so goddamn happy he could cry._

_“Wyatt?” she whispers._

_“Hmm?”_

_“Can I tell you something?”_

_“Anything.”_

_She smiles tentatively at him. “I love you.”_

_“I’ll take it as many times as you want to say it baby doll but you did mention that already.”_

_“No, you smartass,” Lucy laughs. “I mean, I love you, and so I want you to remember that when I—”_

“Wyatt?” Flynn snapped his fingers in Wyatt’s face. “Hey. Wyatt, Wyatt, you have to look at me.”

Wyatt blinked and looked around. “Did I…”

“Slump against the desk, yeah. Don’t worry, I caught you.”

Given that he was now in Flynn’s arms again, yeah, he figured. Fuck, in the memory—he’d been about to remember something important. Something about him and Lucy… and Flynn, something about Flynn.

“Hey, you need to stay with me.” Flynn carded a hand through Wyatt’s hair. “I know that it’s easy to get lost in the memories but you can’t, you have to stay with me.”

Wyatt leaned back into him. There was no place he’d rather be in that moment. Flynn made him feel safe. “It was something important.”

“Then you’ll remember it more later. We have to keep moving.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go in here in the first place.”

“All right, all right.” Flynn got Wyatt to his feet. “Just make sure your head’s on straight okay?”

“Check your own head,” he muttered.

“I heard that.”

A moan came from outside and they froze.

“Did you hear that too?” Wyatt whispered.

“Smart ass.” Flynn slipped over to the office door, peering through the crack. He held up a hand, telling Wyatt to stay put.

The moans grew closer, along with the padding noises, like an animal loping along. Wyatt held his breath as the moaning stopped right outside their door.

He heard the creature sniffing.

Oh fuck fuck fuck…

He focused on breathing, watching Flynn, who looked almost like a cat, coiled up, ready to pounce.

Time seemed to stand still.

Then the loping continued and the creature scuttled on.

Wyatt’s shoulders slumped as he heaved a sigh of relief. Flynn let out a slow breath. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Flynn was almost starting to forget what light looked like. Out in space it was always dark when you looked out the windows, but this was different. Flynn could remember Lucy talking about the spread through the galaxy, colonizing Mars, Venus, Europa, the Trappist planets, and how they’d found people got depressed being out in all of that darkness for too long.

He could understand it now. It was so dark in here, the stars outside looked bright. If he squinted, in the very distance he could see planets. Stations were supposed to be in international waters, so to speak, so couldn’t be too near any planets or they’d be subject to that planet’s rules.

It was all very dicey, politically.

He kept thinking he saw things that weren’t there. Memories melded with his present paranoia. He would hear Iris laughing, or think Lucy was talking to him. But it was all just… ghosts. Memories coming back.

“These are the dorms,” Wyatt whispered. “I remember that.”

He walked up to a door and wiped the dust off the plaque on the front. _Captain’s Quarters_ , the plaque read.

Denise.

“She had a wife,” Flynn remembered suddenly. “Two kids.”

Wyatt tried the door and peered in, inhaling sharply. “Whatever happened in here, it wasn’t pretty.”

Flynn peered in. There was blood on the floor, and sprayed across one of the walls. Under the bed he thought he saw a foot sticking out.

Jesus fuck. He pulled Wyatt away, closing the door. “She was a good person.”

Wyatt shook a little. “Yeah. Last time I saw her—” His eyes got a little glazed as the memory took hold. “We argued over what to do about this situation, whatever it was. You—you’d stormed off and Lucy followed…”

_“Flynn!”_

_God dammit, if these idiots aren’t going to listen to him then someone’s got to do something, they need to call the government and get a proper squad here now, they need to evacuate the station, they need—_

_Lucy’s hand grabs his wrist and she tugs him around. “Flynn, please, Denise is just trying—”_

_“She’s going to get us all killed if we don’t evacuate,” he replies. He grabs her shoulders. “Lucy, please, take Amy and get out. I don’t care if it’s against regulation.”_

_“They’re just rumors—”_

_“Rumors don’t come from nowhere.”_

_“What aren’t you and Denise telling me? Does it have something to do with your job?”_

_“Just—just listen, I need—”_

_“And what about what I need?” Lucy snaps. “I need you.”_

_That throws him for a loop and his tongue darts out, licking his lips, as he tries to make sense of this. “What—you have Wyatt, you—”_

_Lucy gives an exasperated sigh and grabs him by the shirt. “You really are an idiot.”_

_And then she kisses him._

_Flynn’s brain shorts out and he freezes, his hands falling to her hips as she presses herself against him and kisses him with all the commanding and savage nature that she refuses to show in the rest of her life, kissing him the way he always suspected she would._

_When at last they part to breathe, the only thing Flynn can blurt out is, “Why?”_

_“You can’t keep your damn tongue in your mouth, that’s why,” Lucy snaps, and then she’s kissing him again and Flynn would like to point out that if anybody’s not keeping their tongue in their mouth it’s her because she is, in fact, sticking her tongue quite thoroughly into his mouth, but he’d have to stop kissing her to tell her that and no way in Hell is he stopping this._

_He wraps his arms around her and hauls her to him and Lucy gets her hands into the hair at the back of his head, tugging a little, holding him in place. “You bastard, you stupid—is this why you’ve been avoiding me? Huh?” She shakes him a little and he sees tears in her eyes. She kisses him hot and fierce, teeth scraping along his lower lip. “Don’t ever do that again, I need you.”_

_“Lucy.” His voice sounds like sandpaper._

_“I love both of you,” she insists. “And I’m not letting either of you be assholes about this, and I’m not leaving this station. Not unless you and Wyatt leave too.”_

_“I—I can’t leave.” Wyatt can’t leave either, he’s a security officer. He’ll be one of the last to leave if there is an evacuation._

_“Then I’m not leaving.”_

It was his fault.

Oh, God, it was his fault.

“Flynn?” Wyatt grabbed him. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“It’s my fault she’s still here,” Flynn blurted out. “She wouldn’t leave unless we went with her, and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t leave the station and so she stayed.”

 

* * *

 

Flynn was quiet as they made their way. Wyatt was pretty sure that it couldn’t be all Flynn’s fault. He could remember Lucy’s stubbornness and her loyalty. And if—if his memories were right and he felt they were, it was like his bones were settling in, like a feeling of belonging—then he and Lucy were together when this whole thing went down. He couldn’t have left, he was security. Both he and Flynn would’ve been stuck on the station until the last moment, and he knew in his gut that Lucy wouldn’t have left either of them.

What he didn’t remember, what he needed to remember, was what happened to Jess. He knew that she was on the station. She’d come here with him. But what had happened?

“This is the science section,” Flynn whispered, pausing.

_“Why were you in the science labs?”_

He paused. Jess.

“Flynn. Flynn we have to go into the labs.”

“What?” Flynn looked at him like he was crazy. “Wyatt—”

_“Wyatt, it’s over, okay? We tried, and we tried, and I’m—I’m not forcing us to keep doing something over and over again when we both know it’s not working out. You obviously want to be with Lucy and Flynn and God knows I’ve got someone I’d—that I’ve—the point is, we aren’t a couple in any way that matters. It’s done, I’m done.”_

She’d left. She’d left and she was going to be stranded or worse because he was a jackass and he’d failed her—

“Wyatt—”

“She went to the science labs, she went there because Amy was there, she went to talk to her—”

“Don’t—”

There came a moan, then a shriek. Wyatt turned and looked down the hallway, flashlight beam just barely illuminating the darkness, and saw three… four… five creatures.

Shit. “Flynn!”

“I see ‘em.” Flynn pulled out his gun. “Into the lab, go, go!”

Wyatt pushed oven the door and Flynn slid in behind him, grabbing a nearby table, spilling the contents of it and yanking it in front of the door.

They both backed as they heard the creatures banging at the door.

“We are so screwed,” Wyatt blurted out.

 

* * *

 

They needed to get out of there. “Lucy?”

There was just silence. Flynn swore under his breath. She must’ve decided it was too risky to talk to them, that it might bring more creatures. “Wyatt, let’s go.”

Wyatt backed into him, looking lost. Flynn bit back a sigh. Wyatt obviously hadn’t remembered that he and Jess were over—or maybe he did and wanted to make amends. Either way it didn’t matter. They had to get out of here and they couldn’t do that if Wyatt’s head wasn’t on straight.

_Flynn’s half asleep when there’s a knock on his door._

_“Coming.”_

_He stumbles to the door, ready for an emergency, Denise, a security breach—and is face to face with Wyatt instead._

_“Wh—”_

_Wyatt shoves past him and Flynn closes the door. “You can’t just come in here.”_

_Wyatt sits down on Flynn’s cot and scrubs a hand across his eyes, which Flynn realizes are rimmed red. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t know who else to go to.”_

_Flynn takes a good long look at him. Wyatt’s scruff is worse than usual, he looks haggard, and Flynn’s pretty sure he’s had a bit to drink. “What happened?”_

_He fully expects Wyatt to say something about Lucy, so he’s blindsided when Wyatt instead croaks out, “Jess served me divorce papers.”_

_Oh. Fuck._

_Not that Flynn hadn’t seen it coming. Jess and Wyatt were on the rocks since they got here, and everyone and their mother has seen both of them flirting with other people. Flynn doesn’t think Jess has actually gone so far as to cheat on Wyatt, and he knows for a fact Wyatt hasn’t slept with Lucy because she told him so, but still, the writing was on the wall._

_Doesn’t mean that Wyatt isn’t hurting over it._

_He sits down next to him. “She wants you to sign them?”_

_Wyatt nods. He stays silent for a long moment and then whispers, “I don’t know what to do.”_

_“What do you want to do?”_

_Wyatt looks up at him, and there’s something devastating and dark in his eyes that Flynn can’t decipher. It’s like the earth has cracked open. “I don’t know what I want.”_

_“Then I think you should figure it out.”_

_He looks down at his hands. “What I want… I can’t have what I want, Garcia.”_

_“Why not?”_

_Wyatt mumbles something that he can’t hear. Flynn repeats himself. “Wyatt. Why not?”_

_Wyatt tries to speak, can’t, ends up just shaking his head. Flynn realizes—holy shit, Wyatt’s crying._

_“Hey, hey.” He pulls Wyatt in before he even knows what he’s doing. “It’s gonna be okay.”_

_He viciously shoves his own feelings aside, the ones that remind him that now Wyatt’s free, he and Lucy will get together. He doesn’t have time to nurse a broken heart, not when he’s just starting to get over nursing his grief._

_“Garcia?” Wyatt rests his head on Flynn’s shoulder, and Flynn’s heart aches. He wants to ask why Wyatt came to him, why him of all people, they’re hardly friends—weird almost-sexual moments aside—and Wyatt’s done quite a lot of work to show Flynn he doesn’t give a shit about him._

_But to ask that would be to take a look at his own heart, and Flynn’s not sure he’s got the courage for that._

_“Yeah?”_

_He waits for an answer. And waits. And waits._

_And then realizes that Wyatt’s literally fallen asleep on him._

_No way is Flynn carrying the guy’s ass all the way through to the security wing. He tucks Wyatt in instead and sits at the table, messaging Rufus to see if he’s on Gamma shift again and wants to play some online chess._

_It’s not like he’d be sleeping tonight anyway._

“Hey.” He grabbed Wyatt by the shoulder, spinning him around and grabbing his face. “Look at me, okay? We can find Jess if that’s what you want but you have to keep focused. You can’t just go running after whatever memory you want, or you’ll be Alice chasing a goddamn rabbit down a hole and you’ll never come up again. We have to be smart.”

The door in front of them buckled. Flynn forced himself to let go of Wyatt’s face and grabbed his wrist instead. The darkness messed with him, made him unsure of where walls were, and he tripped, stumbling over a corpse on the floor. “Let’s go.”

The table was sent flying as the door burst open.

“ _Sranje_ , run!” Flynn ordered, firing into the creatures as Wyatt got behind him.

He felt a hand tugging at his jacket as he fired, Wyatt slowly pulling him back. One of the creatures leapt up onto the goddamn table and then came at them, knocking Flynn to the ground, clawing at his leg. Wyatt fired at it, getting it in the head, helping Flynn to his feet.

 _Rittenhouse is going to pay for this_ , he thought, and he knew he’d had that thought before—

“Flynn, don’t chase the goddamn rabbit!” Wyatt yelled, dragging Flynn back through into another room, throwing the door shut. “We gotta go we gotta go we gotta go—”

His leg felt like it was on fire and he couldn’t quite put his full weight on it, blood seeping out and dripping onto the floor. “You have to go, they’ll follow the blood trail.”

Wyatt looked down at Flynn’s leg, then grabbed a rag off one of the lab tables, shaking it to get the blood off. “You’re not gonna like me for this.”

He slapped the rag to Flynn’s wounds. Flynn hissed, pain shooting up his leg like goddamn flames, but then Wyatt began to smear the blood all over the tables using the rag. “This should buy us some time,” he panted, throwing making a blood trail along the walls with it. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Sometimes, you’re actually not half-bad.”

“Pity you didn’t lose your sense of humor along with your memory,” Wyatt grumbled sarcastically.

They stumbled into another hallway, then another lab, completely lost now that they’d gone off the path. His leg kept buckling and Wyatt had to get Flynn’s arm around his shoulders. The whole time, they could hear the moaning and shrieking of the creatures behind them.

There were bodies everywhere in this section. Bodies literally torn apart. Flynn saw a spinal column just lying there, blood smeared on the floor around it. Mostly though, he saw people with their faces eaten out, their brains gone, devoured—with their hands still raised in pleading or self-defense.

God, it was almost enough to make him puke.

Wyatt grabbed a door. “In here.” He helped Flynn inside and then shut the door, grabbing the desk and shoving it in front before helping Flynn to collapse into a chair.

“I know this place,” Flynn said. Everything was fuzzy—blood loss but also memories swimming to the surface, too many memories.

“Rittenhouse,” he rasped. “I know what they were doing here. They were conducting experiments—they could do it on a station, away from government interference, away from law enforcement—”

“Until an inspector came,” Wyatt finished for him. He crouched down, peeling back the torn fabric to look at Flynn’s leg. “Dammit. There has to be some medical equipment around here.”

“Just stop the bleeding, I’ll be fine.”

“You always were a self-sacrificing asshole,” Wyatt snapped.

“My presence—it was my fault. They upped the time frame, started pushing for more results, to get something working before I reported them and shut them down.”

“And they pushed too fast.” Wyatt took off his jacket and ripped out the inner lining, using that to wrap around Flynn’s leg.

Flynn nodded, hissing through clenched teeth as Wyatt tightened the makeshift bandages. “Lucy?”

There was an agonizing pause, then: “I’m here.”

Flynn sagged against the chair. “We need to find a new way out.”

“I know. I’m working on it. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, we’re both fine.”

“He’s an idiot, he’s not fine, he took a swipe to the leg. It’s my fault, I lost my head.” Wyatt stood up, sitting on the edge of the desk.

“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Flynn objected. “Lucy, while you’re calculating the route—I remember. Rittenhouse did this.”

“Yes.” Lucy sighed. “You told me. I was tired of being kept in the dark and so you told me and I went to go find Amy. You and Wyatt went off—and then—”

She sounded choked up.

“You don’t have to talk about it.” Flynn keeled forward, resting his forehead on Wyatt’s knee. Fuck, his leg hurt. And God why was there so much dust and decay everywhere?

He missed Lucy. Fuck he missed her.

_The brunette turns towards him, smiling. “Hi, I’m Lucy Preston. I’m the navigator.”_

_“Garcia Flynn. I’m in administration with Captain Christopher.”_

He could be misremembering but he was pretty sure he loved her from the moment he met her.

He felt a hand gently carding through his hair—Wyatt. “Let us know where to go, Luce.”

“Give me just a minute. Rest. I think you lost them.”

“Good work,” Flynn murmured, reaching up and patting Wyatt on the thigh. Wyatt went stiff and Flynn quickly retracted his hand, but Wyatt didn’t stop petting him.

He felt Wyatt turning, looking at something on the computer, or on the walls, or whatever. “Jesus,” he said quietly.

“What is it?”

Wyatt’s hold on his hair tightened painfully for a moment and then relaxed. “I—I sort of remember. But these charts on the walls here, there’s some pictures—Jesus, Garcia, I think they were experimenting on people with alien matter. Stuff they’d found on the Trappist planets.”

“Fuck.” Flynn forced himself to sit up, putting his hands on Wyatt’s knees. That—that sounded right. He looked over at the charts hanging on the wall.

“What the fuck kind of people would—”

“Rittenhouse would,” Flynn cut him off with a growl.

Wyatt put his hands over Flynn’s, squeezing. Flynn didn’t know if Wyatt was trying to reassure himself or Flynn at this point. Maybe both.

_People running, fleeing—_

“It was chaos,” Flynn murmured.

_He’s with Wyatt and they have to get to—to Amy, for some reason, but it’s pandemonium. People are limping, bleeding. Someone falls, starts twitching, then arching, changing, their skin bulging—_

_“They’re infected!” someone screams. “They’re changing!”_

“Everyone died,” Flynn rasped. “It was pandemonium.”

Wyatt bent over, almost as if he was trying to wrap himself around Flynn, and Flynn felt something inside of him crumble, like a wall had fallen down. The pain of the past felt like the present, and the present was already frightening enough, and he could hear the screams and smell blood…

He just wanted Lucy in his arms, and he wanted to keep holding and being held by Wyatt, and he wanted to have everyone he loved safe again, and he wanted to be off this damn station. He wanted… he held onto Wyatt tighter. He wanted—

The memory was an onslaught, so powerful he could almost feel it. He could practically feel Wyatt’s body against him, between him and the wall, Wyatt’s mouth hot against Flynn’s, insistent and desperate.

_“Oh God, please.” Wyatt sounds so pretty begging. Flynn can’t stop kissing him, he doesn’t want to stop kissing him, his hands greedy and tugging underneath Wyatt’s regulation clothes, searching for the hot, firm skin, skin he wants to bruise—_

_He presses Wyatt further into the wall, rutting without thought, swallowing the sound Wyatt makes, finally, finally, finally getting to have him._

_Something. A sound. Flynn pulls his head back. Did he hear…?_

_Wyatt’s kissing down his neck, hot, sucking kisses, it’s so easy to turn back to him and keep fucking against him, feeling Wyatt hard underneath his clothes, wanting to rip it all off…_

_No that was definitely a scream._

_Wyatt freezes and they both pull back, turning. They’re in one of the tiny, cramped station bathrooms, and the door’s not all that thick. There’s running feet, screams of fear, and something else, thunderous running like paws, and then a shriek that’s not human in the slightest—_

_“The rumors,” Wyatt says, voice hoarse. “The rumors are true?”_

_Fear floods him. Lucy._

_They can’t get out, not with creatures just outside the door. They have to wait until it’s quiet._

_His radio crackles to life. “Flynn?”_

_Lucy. “It’s me, I’m here.”_

_“Wh-where’s Wyatt.” Fuck, she sounds terrified._

_“He’s with me. We’re in the bathroom in Hallway A, level five.” There will be time to explain what exactly he was doing in a bathroom with Wyatt later._

_His radio goes silent and for an agonizing moment he thinks she’s gone, the creatures got her, and then he hears desperate banging on the bathroom door. He opens it._

_It’s Lucy, and she’s covered in blood._

_“Amy,” she sobs. “They got Amy.”_

The memory faded.

“Flynn? Wyatt?” Lucy was back, sounding tentative. “I have a route planned out, if you’re ready.”

He forced himself to stand up. His leg still hurt like a bitch and he was going to be slower, but if they were careful, hopefully they wouldn’t run into anymore creatures.

“We’re ready,” he said.

Wyatt gave him a look but stood up. “You need more rest.”

“I need a doctor and we’re wasting time by sitting here. We have to get to Lucy.” He lowered his voice. “She’s been stuck in the command center for weeks, Wyatt, she’s claustrophobic. How do you think she feels stuck in that one room this whole time?” How many panic attacks had she had all alone with nobody to help her through them?

Wyatt nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

Flynn double-checked that his gun was loaded. “We’re almost out of ammo.”

“Then we’ll be extra careful.” Wyatt grabbed Flynn’s arm and Flynn let himself brace against Wyatt. “All right, Lucy, tell us what to do.”

 

* * *

 

They were almost there, at least according to the list of directions Lucy had given them. Fuck, those shrieks and howls were still everywhere.

Jess had gone to the science labs—why wasn’t he finding her?

_“Amy, you have to help Amy.”_

_“Where’s Jess, she went to find her.”_

_“She ran to the IT section, I think to warn Jiya.”_

“She’s in IT!”

“What?” Flynn hissed. “Wyatt—”

“Jess is in IT.”

“I’m not going after Jess and neither are you!” Flynn hissed. “Look around, Wyatt! There’s dust everywhere, the bodies are decayed. Lucy might have said it was a few weeks but I think she’s lying to protect us. It’s been a long time, Wyatt. Jess isn’t there.”

“She is, and I let her down too many times, Flynn. I have to find her.”

“Wyatt…”

“Just get to Lucy, I’ll be there soon. I’m remembering, I have to find her. I can’t let her down again. She’ll be scared and alone and—she made sure I was never alone, she stuck with me longer than she should’ve had to because I had no one else. Now I have to make sure I do that for her.”

Flynn shook his head. “You are the most stubborn, irresponsible… fine. You want to still be hung up on Jess? Go right ahead. You hung onto her when all you really wanted was Lucy, and when all she wanted was to be free. You two drove each other insane!”

Wyatt blinked away the angry, burning itch in his eyes. “Fine. I’m going after her. I’m making this right.”

“Wyatt—there are some things you can’t make right. You can’t undo—”

He wasn’t going to put up with this. He was finding Jess and getting her out of here. He owed it to her.

He hurried down the corridors, trying not to think about the ache in his chest when he heard Flynn didn't follow. So what, he'd find Jess and it would all be okay. Flynn could just—just fuck off.

The continuing ache told him what a lie that statement was.

Wyatt kept his gun up as he hurried, trying to be quiet but he refused to sacrifice his speed for this. Lucy had said weeks, well, Jess was a smart girl, she could keep herself alive for that long, she could—

He tripped over something, falling to the floor with a painful  _umph_.

He turned and looked—and his heart leapt into his throat.

Jess.

Her body was twisted, shrunken with time as decay set in, but he could still recognize her. How—it couldn't have been just a few weeks to do this to her. And she—her body was ripped open, her intestines—he could see straight through to her spine, Jesus Christ.

"Jess." The word spilled out of him before he could stop himself and he surged forward, stopping himself just shy of touching her. In this darkness, this black, empty, hungry void, it felt like there was nothing in the world but him and her body. Just Wyatt, floating in the blackness, with no tether. She'd once been his tether. And he'd abused that.

It was his idea to do this. He knew it, somehow. To save their marriage, to get away from all they'd known. And instead when he looked back all he could remember was fighting. They'd gotten divorced, and it hadn't been pretty. He'd brought her that. He should've cut her loose long ago, then she wouldn't have come here, she'd be alive and safe and—

With a terrifying scream, a creature leapt out at him from the all-consuming darkness.

 

* * *

 

Dammit Wyatt, _dammit_! Flynn almost hoped one of those creatures would come after him so he could beat it to death with his bare fists. That idiot, going after Jess, going—

_“She’s dead.” Jiya’s covered in blood, being supported by Rufus, claw marks in her side. “She got me out of the room but one of those things got her and she collapsed and we—I tried, I tried dragging her but she was—there was so much blood and then she wasn’t breathing—” Jiya wiped at her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. I’m—I’m sorry Amy.”_

Flynn stumbled back. He could feel Wyatt sagging against him, even though there was no one. He could hear Lucy crying over someone, could hear Rufus yelling orders as people ran around.

Jess was dead. She died—and Wyatt was trying to find her.

Dammit!

“Flynn—”

“I know Lucy.” Fuck. “I’m going after him.” Damn stupid idiot—Flynn kind of hated that he was in love with him.

The corridors were even more foreboding without Wyatt there to cover his back. Flynn stuck to the walls, walking almost sideways, keeping an ear out. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t have to listen too carefully.

He was right.

There was a yell up ahead, and then a howl. Flynn took off running, twisting through the corridors. He tripped over another corpse, feeling the darkness pressing around him, feeling like it was alive—

“Wyatt!” It felt like he could see the images of Lorena and Iris in the shadows, could hear the screams of everyone running on the station on either side of him. He wasn’t going to add Wyatt to that list of his failures.

“Here!” Wyatt came stumbling out of a room, his jacket torn and bloodied. “Fuck, fuck, they got the—”

A creature leapt at him, tearing into his arm. Flynn fired, kicking at the creature and hauling it off Wyatt. “You reckless son of a bitch.”

“Her body, I found—I found her body—” Wyatt sounded like his heart had been ripped out.

Flynn pulled him in. “I know. I know.”

“She’s eaten, she’s… she was devoured, fuck, Garcia…”

“Hey, hey, we’ll mourn later all right? We have to get out of here.”

“I failed her.”

“Look, I’ve got no leg to stand on when it comes to saying you did or didn’t fail someone but we can have that discussion when we’re not getting attacked on all sides.” He heard another growl in the distance. Dammit, this darkness messed with him, he couldn’t tell where anything was coming from, like taking away one sense dulled all the others, disoriented them. “We’re almost there.”

“I don’t understand,” Wyatt whispered. “She was—her body was—like a, a, a husk, all dried out and—”

“We’ve been here longer than a few weeks,” Flynn told him. “I think… I think we’ve been here for years.”

Years, on a dying, decaying ship.

He pressed his cheek to Wyatt’s temple, cradling Wyatt’s face, trying to soothe him. “Let’s get to Lucy, okay? Let’s get to her and we’ll sort this all out.”

“Five years.”

It was whispered over the intercom, like Lucy felt guilty saying it out loud. “Five years. That’s… that’s how long it’s been. How long it took to… to fix everything. To get it to where it should be so I could wake you up. We’ve been floating in this coffin for five years.”

He felt Wyatt shudder. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I wanted you to have hope.” Lucy sounded agonized. “Hope that we’d make it out.”

“Then why wake us up at all if we can’t get out?”

“Because—because if we’re all together—you two separated, left me in the control room to go to get supplies, you were going to plunder some of the cryo bay tech to help repair the damaged mainframe. But while you were there things were overrun and you couldn’t get back to me. So I put you in cryo while I fixed up the mainframe more slowly. Rufus and Jiya ejected themselves in the pods, and hopefully… the plan is to contact them to come get us.”

“Why is it important that we—why couldn’t we just eject ourselves in the pods like Rufus and Jiya?”

“Please, just come to the control room.”

“Lucy.” Flynn hated that he felt this anger at her but he did, he was angry. Furious. “You lied to us, you’re still not explaining everything, I know you’re keeping things back from us. What aren’t we remembering—how many lies have you told?” Had she influenced their memories? Made them remember only certain things, or remember things improperly, because of what she said or the path she made them take? How could he know, in this coffin of darkness, this dead prison, what was real and what was only imagined? Was he even awake right now?

“Come to the control center,” Lucy replied. “And I promise you, I’ll tell you the whole truth.”

She cut out.

 

* * *

 

Flynn was clearly angry.

Wyatt wasn’t sure what he was feeling. He’d had to stare at his wife’s five-year-old corpse.

She’d died horribly. Violently. And he hadn’t been there.

He’d failed her.

Flynn was tapping his fingers along his thigh as they walked, looking like a man heading to the executioner’s block.

In that moment, staring at Jess’s body, all he’d wanted—all he’d thought about was how he wanted Flynn to hold him again. To tell him it was going to be okay. To make him feel safe, the way he’d been doing this whole time. To hold his hand, and stroke his hair, and—

_Hands._

_He’s starting at Flynn’s hands as they drum restlessly on the counter. “Rufus, what the hell, this is supposed to be state of the art,” Flynn grumbles, gesturing at the computer._

_Rufus replies, but Wyatt can’t focus because he’s just staring at Flynn’s goddamn hands with the long elegant fingers and thinking—_

_Fuck._

_Flynn turns, sighs, gives Wyatt a shrug. “Hey, looks like the computers are down again. I’ll get us some coffee. Bit of milk and two pumps of hazelnut right?”_

_Wyatt stares at the man he used to think he hated and realizes, he knows how I like my coffee._

_Then he realizes, oh fuck me, I’m in love with him._

Flynn looked up and saw Wyatt staring at him like the human version of the ‘404 Error Page Not Found’. He snapped his fingers in front of Wyatt’s face. “Wyatt?”

It was quite possibly the second stupidest decision he’d ever made but fuck it, there were zombie aliens on this ship and they were both possibly about to die, so he grabbed Flynn by the labels of his jacket and kissed him.

There was a moment where Wyatt could feel Flynn thinking ‘did Wyatt lose his mind’, but then those strong arms were wrapping around him, hauling the two of them together, and Flynn was demonstrating that he knew how to use his mouth for things other than being sarcastic.

Flynn kissed him like he knew how, like they’d done this before—and maybe they had, and Wyatt just hadn’t remembered it yet. Flynn wouldn’t let him make the kiss frantic, sucked on his lip and slid his tongue in with deliberate purpose, until Wyatt could only release a helpless noise and go along for the ride. Flynn’s hands tightened on his back and he sucked on Wyatt’s tongue, drawing it into his mouth, drawing all of Wyatt into him. Wyatt got his hands up, framing Flynn’s face, feeling the stubble under his palms, pressing his hips in and gasping as he felt every inch of that solid muscle against him.

And then he pulled back, inhaling sharply, trying to get his breath—as Flynn pulled away.

Flynn looked wrecked, his eyes wide, his lips slick and red. “Wyatt, we—we can’t.”

“I know this isn’t the time or the place—”

“No, Wyatt, we _can’t_.” Flynn shook his head. “Look, you’re messed up, we both are, with our memories. This isn’t what you want.”

Wyatt stared at him, feeling something inside of him crack open. “You don’t get to decide what I do and don’t want, Flynn.”

“Historically you’re not the best at deciding that,” Flynn pointed out.

Well that was a real slap in the face. “Well you’re not the best at it either. I remember, you loved Lucy. Did you ever tell her? Huh? You weren’t the one who was married, there was nothing to stop you.”

“Except that she was in love with you!” Flynn burst out.

“And what, I can’t love you both?” Wyatt spat.

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“Hello!” Lucy’s voice came over the intercom again. “Wyatt? Flynn? What are you doing! We’re running out of time!”

“We are finishing this conversation later,” Wyatt hissed.

“No we are not,” Flynn replied, lowering his voice as well. “Whatever you think you’re feeling? It’s not real.”

Wyatt grabbed him, yanking him in until their faces were an inch apart. “You give me five minutes, and I’ll show you what’s real.”

He let go, shoving Flynn, then turning and storming down the hallway. So what if he was being loud? Let some damn whatever these creatures were come at him. He could use a good fight.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt could be as pissed as he wanted. Flynn could still feel him—taste him—in his mouth, against his lips, but dammit they couldn’t trust anything. They couldn’t trust themselves.

Who was to know if they were even Flynn and Wyatt? What if they were other people? Everything they remembered could all be fabricated by their minds, damaged by the cryo and desperately searching for answers. They’d gotten their names and jobs from the clothes they were wearing. It was an easy assumption to think that those clothes and identities were therefore theirs. But who was to say? What if there was so much more at work here than he’d thought?

Rittenhouse—he knew he’d come to take them down. And he knew Lorena and Iris had been loved, and lost, by him. Nothing could shake his faith in that. But how could he dare to say that he’d found new love? How could he dare to suggest that he knew what had happened and how?

“Should just be down this hallway,” Wyatt said quietly, his face tight. “I remember.”

_Lucy has his hand, practically dragging him. “I got her into the control room, they haven’t gotten this far yet but she’s fading.”_

The door to the control center was in front of them.

_He opens the door, and there she is, lying on the floor. She’s bleeding out._

_Lucy runs straight to her, cradling her. “Amy, Amy it’s me, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out. We’ll save you.”_

_Amy manages to reach up and grab her sister’s hand. “Lu…cy… gotta… go…”_

_“No.” Lucy shakes her head. “I’m not leaving you. I will never leave you. No matter what it takes.”_

Flynn stopped.

Wyatt turned and looked back at him. “What, what’s the goddamn problem now.”

“I know who you are,” he said. “Lucy. I know who you are. I remember, I know the truth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucy replied.

“Don’t lie to me!”

“Flynn.” Her voice was aching. “Please, just come inside, I’m sorry. I had to lie. You wouldn’t have followed me otherwise. You remembered nothing, neither of you did, your brainwaves were off the charts, erratic. I knew she was the only person you’d follow.”

“Tell the truth!” Flynn bellowed. “You aren’t Lucy!”

“What?” Wyatt grabbed his arm. “Who is she?”

“She sounds a lot like Lucy,” Flynn admitted. “And our memories weren’t all back but that’s what she was counting on.”

“Who is she?”

“Amy. The person we’ve been talking to is Lucy’s younger sister Amy.”

 

* * *

 

The doors to the control room opened silently, allowing Flynn and Wyatt to enter before sliding closed again and locking. Wyatt couldn’t help but wonder what they were in for. The moment Flynn said her name, he remembered Amy Preston. Sweet, but a firecracker.

 _Jess’s girlfriend,_ he suddenly remembered. Jess had started dating Amy after the divorce was finalized. Wyatt remembered she was a dark honey blonde, with Lucy’s eyes but a different face shape.

But when they looked around the room…

There was no one.

“Amy?” Wyatt called.

Flynn was squinting at something over on the other side of the room. The captain’s pod. In the case of an emergency where the personnel in the command center had to leave a dying ship at the last moment, there were escape pods in the walls that doubled as a cryo tubes. Some of them looked like they’d been deployed, while others looked empty, but the one Flynn was staring at seemed to hold someone.

Flynn made a choked noise and sprinted to the pod, and Wyatt was able to see what Flynn had seen:

In the pod was Lucy.

He ran over, pressing his hand to the glass. “Is she—”

“She’s safe,” Amy’s voice said over the intercom once more.

Wyatt whipped around, but there was no one. “Where are you?”

“I’m here.”

The center console, the one that held the navigation systems and the ship’s AI, flickered to life, and a hologram appeared of a young woman, cross-legged, smiling at them sadly.

“Amy?” Flynn breathed.

The hologram waved at them. “Hi, Flynn. Hi, Wyatt.”

_Amy, she’s bleeding out, literally under his hands—_

“Hey, Ames.” Wyatt glanced over at Flynn, who just shrugged. “What’s up?”

“How much do you remember now?”

_“Help her!” Lucy’s sobbing, doing chest compressions while Wyatt tries to stop the blood flowing from Amy’s wounds. Flynn’s covered in Amy’s blood too now, all three of them stained red, and a hysterical laugh nearly bubbles out of Wyatt because here, of course here, now, this is how all three of them finally get on the same wavelength._

_Flynn turns to the console, typing something in. “Lucy, she’s fading, we can’t—”_

“I was dying,” Amy said. “There wasn’t anything we could do, not without medical supplies.”

_“I’m not losing her!” Lucy rips out a panel of the console, starts yanking at wires. Everything’s sparking. Wyatt has no idea what’s going on, just that Lucy’s lost her mind and Amy’s bleeding out under his hands and Flynn looks like he wants to jump off a cliff and Wyatt is not prepared to deal with any of this._

“So Lucy did something… controversial.” Amy made a face. “She hooked me up to the AI program. She essentially downloaded my consciousness into the AI, so that the AI is now, well, me.”

_“What the h… how are you doing that?” Wyatt’s staring but Flynn’s jumping in, helping, because Flynn was always faster on the uptake of things than Wyatt. Not that Wyatt knows what to do here other than ‘keep giving chest compressions’._

_“Stay with me,” Lucy’s panting, connecting wiring, “Amy honey you gotta stay with me.”_

_It can’t work. It can’t possibly work, but then something in the console lights up and—_

“But you’re stuck on the ship,” Flynn blurted out. “You’re a part of the AI system now.”

Amy nodded. “Yes. That’s why you can’t wake up Lucy yet. Not until you talk to me.”

“We have to destroy the ship,” Wyatt said, the pieces falling into place. “It’s the only way to contain the outbreak and destroy Rittenhouse’s work. But Lucy…”

“She won’t leave you,” Flynn finished. That was why he and Wyatt had gone to cryo: to try and get equipment to save Amy. That was why they hadn’t taken the escape pods. He looked over at Wyatt.

Wyatt shrugged. He certainly didn’t have any answers.

Flynn scrubbed a hand across his face. “How would this work? How would we even get off?”

Amy smiled at them, and a hologram of a series of messages popped up. “I jury-rigged the system so I could send a message out to Rufus and Jiya.”

Rufus and Jiya? “They’re okay?”

Amy nodded. “They took the escape pods. But Lucy wouldn’t leave me…”

“…and we wouldn’t leave Lucy,” Flynn finished.

Amy regarded them sadly.

“What is it like?” Wyatt asked. “Being a kind of… um, computer?”

“It’s all right.” Amy looked down at her hologram self. “I don’t have a body anymore. I don’t feel things like hunger or cold. But I can still feel… emotions. Sadness. Loneliness. It’s been very lonely. I was tempted to wake you up, sometimes. But what kind of life would that be? Trapped here? And the food would run out quickly, if there even was any, and…” She shook her head—or rather made the hologram shake its head, Wyatt realized.

“Thank you,” Flynn said, his voice rough. “For looking after us.”

Amy smiled at him. “It was the least I could do for my sister.”

Wyatt looked over at Lucy, still asleep in stasis. “Should we…?”

“Wake her up?” Amy finished. “Yes, most likely. Rufus and Jiya have secured a lifeboat. It will be here shortly. It’s why I woke you up—I knew you had a guaranteed way off the ship. After you set the self-destruct sequence.”

“Can’t you do it?” Flynn asked.

“I cannot destroy myself,” Amy replied quietly.

Wyatt walked over to the cryo pod. God, he’d missed Lucy. Missed her like a limb. “Amy?”

The lights on the pod flashed and the pod opened, Lucy being taken out of stasis. Behind him, Wyatt heard Flynn inhale sharply.

Lucy’s cheeks became flushed, and then she inhaled sharply, her eyes flying open.

Wyatt’s heart twisted. Would she remember them?

Lucy stumbled out and he caught her automatically. She looked up at Wyatt, then looked behind him at Flynn.

“Wyatt?” she whispered. “Garcia?”

Wyatt turned and saw Flynn’s face crumple with emotion and relief as Lucy stumbled towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face into his chest. Flynn held her until Wyatt could see Flynn’s fingers digging in, clinging, like he thought she might disappear on him.

Lucy took his face in her hands, kissing him repeatedly, causing Flynn to look rather dumbstruck. Then she pulled away and—before he could even think to ask what she was doing—grabbed Wyatt by the hand and yanked him in, and then she was kissing him.

It was simultaneously fire in his gut and sinking into a comfortable bed. It was like home.

“Sorry it’s been a while,” he whispered.

Lucy hugged him tightly. Wyatt couldn’t be sure, but from the way her chest heaved, he thought she might have been crying.

She pulled back, wiping at her eyes. “You’re both okay.”

“Takes more than a few mutants to kill us, Lucy, you know that,” Flynn quipped.

“Ten minutes,” Amy recited. “Then the Lifeboat will dock.”

Lucy looked over at the hologram of her sister. “Amy.”

Amy smiled at her. “Lucy.”

Lucy walked over, staring. “You—you’re still okay?”

“I’m fine.” Amy’s smile faded. “But Lucy. Rescue is coming.”

“How long has it been?”

“Five years,” Flynn intoned.

“And we found a way?” Lucy asked. “A way to—to download you, or upload you, or whatever so that—so that you can come with us?”

Amy shook her head. “Lucy, no.”

Lucy looked at Flynn, then at Wyatt. “You—you two were supposed to—no, _no_ , I’m not leaving her!”

“Don’t get angry with them,” Amy said as Wyatt’s chest ached. “I made them get into cryo. There’s no way, Lucy. I’m simply too large of a file to transfer. And what kind of life would that be?”

“You’d be with me,” Lucy choked out. “We’d be together. Family.”

“Lucy…” Wyatt knew it would hurt her to say this, but she had to accept the truth. “That wouldn’t be fair to Amy.”

It hadn’t been fair to Jess.

Lucy shook her head, turning away, but Flynn caught her elbows and turned her back. “Lucy. You know it’s right.”

The two sisters stared at each other. “You have to let her go,” Flynn whispered.

Like he’d let Iris and Lorena go. Wyatt swallowed and looked away.

“The Lifeboat will be here any minute now,” Amy added.

“Amy.” Lucy reached out, but her fingertips passed through the hologram. “I failed you.”

“You didn’t fail anybody,” Amy said firmly. “You need to go, Lucy. It’s what I want. I want you to be happy.”

“I can’t be happy without you.”

“You can be.” Amy’s voice was loving, and Wyatt wondered how much she had grown in these past five years, how much she had learned. “Being happy doesn’t mean you don’t love me. Go and be happy and we’ll see each other again.”

Lucy shook her head, but it was like all the fight had gone out of her with Amy’s insistence.

“This is about what I want too,” Amy added. “And I don’t want you three to die for me. I want you to live.”

Wyatt turned and looked out the window. There in the distance, steadily moving closer, was a Lifeboat—a shuttle designed to make short launches to pick up small groups that got stranded.

“Promise me?” Amy asked. “Promise me, you’ll destroy the ship. And go and live.”

Wyatt looked back over at Lucy.

Lucy closed her eyes, leaning heavily against Flynn. “All right,” she whispered. “Since—since it’s what you want.”

“It is.” Amy made an aborted move to reach out, and then stopped, as if just remembering that she couldn’t actually touch her sister anymore. Wyatt’s heart felt like it was cracking.

He walked over, grabbing Lucy’s hand the way he saw Amy wanted to, squeezing tightly. Lucy squeezed back, her hand shaking like Flynn and Wyatt were the only things keeping her from falling apart.

“I want to hug you,” Lucy whispered, her voice raw. She opened her eyes, staring at Amy. “I love you so much.”

“I love you,” Amy promised. “We’ll see each other again.”

There was the sound of the Lifeboat docking. Wyatt’s breath stuttered in his chest. Rufus and Jiya. After five years. He’d get to see them again.

Lucy wrenched herself away from Amy, as if she had to go now or she’d never manage it. Flynn let go of her, nodding at Wyatt, who took Lucy as Flynn spoke into the intercom.

“Rufus?”

Rufus’s voice came crackling over the line and Wyatt’s knees nearly buckled in relief. “Flynn? You son of a bitch, I should’ve known you’d make it.”

“Yeah, I’m like a cockroach.” Flynn winked at Wyatt, who felt his face heating up. “Listen, you know the situation. I’ll need you to trust the AI program to open the docking bay doors and close them. Don’t open them yourself, not for any reason. We’ll run in and the moment we get in the Lifeboat, seatbelts or no, you take off. Got it? We’re going to be running a gauntlet.”

“I understand.” Rufus sounded shaky but determined. “Is it just you? You said we—did Lucy and Wyatt make it?”

“We’re all here,” Flynn assured him.

Lucy hit Wyatt on the chest, hard. He held her tighter, let her hit him as much as she wanted. If it was the only way she could get her emotions out right now, he’d take a few bruises.

“Then we’ll just be ready to take off. Lifeboat doors are open, but we’ll trust you on the docking bay doors.”

“We’ll be there in a few.” Flynn turned off the intercom and looked over. A look of absolute pain crossed his face as he saw Lucy uselessly hitting Wyatt’s chest in frenzied despair.

He crossed over, grabbing Lucy’s wrists and pressing himself against her back, forcing her to wrap her arms around Wyatt’s neck, sandwiching her between them.

Flynn pressed his forehead to Wyatt’s for a moment, then turned to Lucy and pressed a kiss to her hair. Wyatt held her as tight as he dared as Lucy finally gave in, sagging, letting the two of them hold her up as she cried.

Wyatt wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually Flynn looked up at him. “We need to go,” he whispered.

Wyatt nodded. Flynn stepped to the side, running his hand through Wyatt’s hair, down to cup his face. Wyatt leaned into the touch, for once—maybe for the first time—feeling unashamed. It was like a balloon swelling in his chest, expanding until he could hardly breathe with the pressure of it, leaking into every part of him, _I love I love I love I love. I love you._

He looked into Flynn’s dark eyes. He wanted to ask—did Flynn believe him now? That what he felt, what they felt, was real?

Flynn pressed himself in again, his lips just brushing the corner of Wyatt’s mouth, and somehow that felt deeper, more intimate, than the kissing they’d just done a few minutes ago.

Wyatt dared to turn his head, to kiss the corner of Flynn’s mouth in return. He could feel the ghost of Flynn’s smile just before he pulled back.

Looked like he had his answer.

Lucy was still buried against his chest. He shook her a little, bringing her back to reality, then looked at Flynn. “You take point, I’ll take rear?”

Flynn nodded. “Lucy, stay between us.”

Lucy wiped at her eyes, nodding mutely. She looked over at Amy, who had kept her hologram up.

Amy smiled. If it were possible for a hologram to have tears, Wyatt knew he’d be seeing them now. “Goodbye Lucy. I love you.”

Lucy swallowed. “I love you so much.” She took a deep, deep breath, one that Wyatt could see swelling up her chest. Then she walked up to the console and tapped on it until Wyatt saw a new screen pop up that said SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. She looked Amy in the eye. “Goodbye.”

She turned away quickly and Flynn led her out, Wyatt drawing his weapon and following. He didn’t have to ask her to know—if she didn’t leave now, she never would.

 

* * *

 

Flynn held on tight as he led Lucy through the corridors. His heart was in his throat in a way it had never been before. Before, it was just his own life to worry about, and he’d never cared too much about that.

But now he had Lucy. Now, he had Wyatt. He’d lost his family once and he could not, would not, lose another one.

Up ahead came the sound of the tell-tale moaning. Flynn swallowed. “Lucy, stay back.”

Lucy pressed herself to the wall and Flynn saw Wyatt glancing behind them, making sure nothing could sneak up behind.

Flynn moved forward, checking the floor, the ceiling, sweeping methodically. A banging sound came and he jumped, swinging the flashlight.

It was coming from the other side of a door. He exhaled slowly, watching as the door shook, the snarling continuing.

“Move forward,” he whispered.

Wyatt took Lucy by the arm and hurried her onward. Flynn kept going. There was a corpse on the floor, some stains on the walls, but no creatures.

“Flynn, Wyatt.”

It was Amy.

“I’ve encountered some problems in the docking bay.”

Shit. “How many of them?”

“A dozen. They were trapped between the first and second shields. I think people trying to get out—but it doesn’t matter, what matters is they’ll be between you and the Lifeboat.”

“Fuck,” Wyatt whispered.

There were two large doors set up, called shields, to protect those in the docking bay from getting sucked out into space. The outer doors were opened after the inner ones, operated separately.

“Won’t some bodies get sucked out into space when the outer doors are opened?” Lucy asked.

“Some,” Amy acknowledged. “But not enough.”

“You take one side, Flynn, I can take the other, Lucy between,” Wyatt suggested.

“It’s the best chance we’ve got. Rufus knows to get the doors open.” Speed would be the only thing that saved them.

Behind them, Flynn heard the closed door buckling. Fuck. “Okay, Amy, tell us when to go.”

There were about thirty agonizing seconds of silence, punctuated by nothing but the pounding on the door behind them. “C’mon…” Wyatt muttered.

Flynn glanced over at Lucy. Her face was pale, her lips pressed together, and he could see her fighting to keep her breathing even. Wyatt kept glancing back at the door, doing that thing where he’d shuffle his feet and work his jaw, like he was torn between what to say and what to do.

God, he just wanted to hug them both.

Amy’s voice came over the intercom. “The outer shield is opening.”

Flynn swallowed and looked back through the window into the docking bay. “Get ready.”

He felt Lucy’s hand wrap around his elbow, and knew without looking that her other hand was grabbing Wyatt.

“Opening inner shield,” Amy intoned. “The three of you better have the best damn lives, okay?”

Lucy’s grip on his arm was like steel.

“We will,” Wyatt managed.

The door to the docking bay slid open.

Flynn ran, slower than he would if he was on his own, keeping in mind Lucy’s shorter legs. There was a growl and something came flying at them from the side—Flynn pivoted, bringing his hands up and firing. The creature leaping at them was hit, flying backwards.

“Left!” Wyatt yelled.

Flynn pivoted again and fired. Something went flying over his head and Lucy screamed, ducking. “Wyatt!”

“I know!”

Up ahead the Lifeboat was settling down, the door popping open. Flynn turned around. “Lucy, run!”

She sprinted for it and Flynn turned—

And someone shoved him.

 _No._ Flynn spun and saw Wyatt get tackled by the creature landing on his chest—the creature that had been aiming for Flynn until Wyatt knocked him out of the way.

Lucy gave a shriek that sounded like it had been ripped straight out of her chest. “Don’t!” Flynn yelled, already knowing what she was going to do.

He fired, emptying his clip into the creature as it ripped into Wyatt, tearing at his arms as it tried to get at his face and throat. Wyatt had his hands on the creature’s ears, keeping it from biting him, arms shaking with effort. The creature jerked as Flynn fired, shrieking in pain.

Lucy ignored Flynn—of course she did—running forward. He caught her around the waist and threw her back. “Rufus! Grab her!”

Jiya, not Rufus, emerged from the Lifeboat, grabbing Lucy as she shrieked in anger and helplessness. There were more creatures coming and they had to move, they had to move and if nothing else, Lucy had to make it—

Wyatt hauled the now-dead creature off of him, chest heaving, gasping, eyes wide in terror. Flynn yanked him to standing, his heart hammering. Fuck, _fuck_ , that had been way too close. Wyatt’s sleeves were now torn and bloodied and he looked like he wanted to keel over.

“Go, go, go,” Flynn panted, yanking Wyatt behind him, reloading and firing.

“But—”

“Go!”

Wyatt stumble-ran into the Lifeboat as Flynn emptied another clip, not trying to kill any of them, just slow them all down. He backed up until he was on the steps. “Rufus!”

“Firing it up!” Rufus yelled.

The Lifeboat’s engines started and Flynn turned—

And a creature grabbed his foot.

“Shit!” His balance was thrown off and he could feel himself tipping away from the Lifeboat.

Two hands shot out and Lucy grabbed him. “Wyatt!” She tugged Flynn in, and then Wyatt managed to grab a handful of the back of Lucy’s shirt and yank them both in, and the Lifeboat door slammed shut just as the creature flung itself at it.

Flynn collapsed on top of Lucy, who started laughing and crying hysterically, wrapping her arms around him and kissing every inch of his face.

“This is not how I expected to see you three again,” Jiya commented, panting a little as the Lifeboat took off properly.

“Hold on!” Rufus yelled. “Self-destruct is in a few seconds and I need us to clear the blast radius!”

Wyatt grabbed Flynn and helped him to his feet, moved towards him—then paused.

Ah. Flynn remembered what he’d done the last time Wyatt had moved to show him affection.

He tightened his grip on Wyatt’s hand and pulled him in, cupping Wyatt’s neck with his other hand, his thumb swiping back and forth across Wyatt’s jaw. He was still so scared—scared that there was a memory he and Wyatt were still forgetting, that Wyatt had at some point realized Flynn wasn’t what he wanted, that Lucy would even do the same.

But the way Wyatt was looking at him, eyes wide and scared, hardly daring to look him in the eye for fear of rejection… he never, ever wanted Wyatt to look at him like that again.

He felt Lucy looking at them both, stepping back, letting them do whatever they had to do. He couldn’t remember but he didn’t think they’d ever talked about it, ever had a chance to say what they all felt.

“Hey.” He brushed his nose against Wyatt’s, making Wyatt look up at him.

“I don’t care,” Wyatt admitted, his voice raw. “I don’t care, whatever I remember, I—I fell, all right, I fell for you now, this time, after we woke up, and I don’t care if before we tried to kill each other I just care about now and now—”

Flynn felt like everything inside of him, his very soul, was rising up and choking him and so he closed the distance, kissing Wyatt, sealing their mouths together.

Wyatt made a choked noise, almost but not quite a sob, and grabbed onto Flynn’s jacket, holding on tight.

“Hold on!” Jiya yelled.

The blowback from the explosion hit them like a bucking horse. Flynn reached out blindly and felt Lucy falling into him as he slammed back into the wall. He was definitely going to have bruises from this. Wyatt’s head smashed into the side and he yelped in pain, it was just a tangle of limbs everywhere, all he could do was hold on—

Rufus righted the Lifeboat and they all fell to the floor.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Wyatt groaned.

Flynn stumbled up as Lucy jumped to her feet and ran for the window. She pressed her hands to the glass, pressed her face to it, staring as the station burned in front of them.

He managed to get to his feet, coming up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. Lucy leaned back into him, grabbing his arms, letting him hold her.

Wyatt stumbled over, grabbing Flynn’s shoulder for balance.

“I love you, Wyatt, but don’t throw up on me,” Flynn warned.

“I’m good,” Wyatt replied.

Flynn snorted. Yeah, right. He shook Wyatt’s hand off and then wrapped his arm around Wyatt’s waist, tugging him in so that Wyatt could curl into Flynn’s side, wrapping himself around Lucy.

He didn’t say it out loud, but he thought the burning station looked like a Viking funeral. The end of a warrior. The proper end for a woman as loved as Amy. For a moment—just a moment—the universe was going to be lit up by that light, and know—know that something, someone, momentous had happened.

“So are you three gonna just cuddle?” Rufus asked. “Or are you going to actually sit down and buckle up so I can get us back safely?”

“I had almost forgotten what a wonderful sense of timing you have, Rufus,” Flynn replied, but he was grinning.

Lucy turned, wiping her eyes on his shirt. “We—we’re all together now, right?” She looked from him to Wyatt and back again. “All three?”

“If that’s what you want,” Flynn replied.

Lucy got up on her tiptoes and kissed him softly. “Soon you’ll remember that’s all I’ve ever wanted,” she promised.

Flynn didn’t know what was coming next. But he knew that he had Lucy and Wyatt. He wasn’t alone. And wherever they wanted to go, he’d go too.

 


End file.
